Space X does it again

The Satellite
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I don’t know if it’s true but I love this story.

It’s a tale told many times, but briefly, it goes like this: In 1961, NASA purchased a selection of chronographs from a watch store Houston, Texas. The shopper, who apparently said nothing about being a NASA employee, purchased an off-the-shelf Omega Speedmaster and models from Longines, Rolex, Hamilton and others. Throughout a two-year testing period, the watch brands were unaware that NASA was testing their watches for space travel.

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It is not true.

NASA put the bid out to 10 manufactures and only 4 responded with bids by sending in watches. Hamilton for whatever the reason submitted pocket watches.

I am trying to recall but I believe Rolex failed the humidity test and stopped working.

Here is the criteria used by NASA.

NASA’s test requirements

For the watches to qualify for in-flight use by the astronauts, NASA came up with a set of tests designed to give these timepieces hell.

  1. High-temperature test: 70° C for 48 hours and then 93° C for 30 minutes in a partial vacuum.
  2. Low-temperature test: -18° C for four hours.
  3. Vacuum test: heated in a vacuum chamber and then cooled to -18° C for several cycles.
  4. Humidity test: ten 24-hour cycles in >95% humidity with temperatures ranging from 25° C to 70° C.
  5. Corrosion test: an atmosphere of oxygen at 70° C for 48 hours.
  6. Shock-resistance test: six shocks at 40 g in six different directions.
  7. Acceleration test: progressive acceleration to 7.25 g for about five minutes and then to 16 g for 30 seconds on three axes.
  8. Low-pressure test: pressure of 10.6 atmospheres at 70° C for 90 minutes and then at 93° C for 30 minutes.
  9. High-pressure test: air pressure of 1.6 atmospheres for 60 minutes.
  10. Vibration test: random vibrations on three axes between five and 2,000 Hz with an acceleration of 8.8 g.
  11. Sound test: 130 decibels at frequencies from 40 to 10,000 Hz for 30 minutes.

NASA’s standards allowed each watch a maximum average deviation of six seconds per day during normal use after testing. According to official documentation we’ve seen from Omega’s archives, it seems that the Rolex reference 6238 failed the humidity test, with the movement simply coming to a stop. In addition, the watch failed the high-temperature test. The Longines-Wittnauer 235T failed the high-temperature test as well due to the crystal having warped and disengaged.

【F】 How The Omega Speedmaster Became The Moonwatch

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Just looking into SpaceX launch schedule and came across
this little gem on the Falcon 9 rocket. It’s showing that there have been
450 Falcon 9 launches with 421 booster return landings in last 15 years. This latest launch was with a 9 day booster rocket turnaround. That’s an average
of 30 launches per year over Falcon 9 life, and is probably much higher rate
now.

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Thanks for that bit of research, both interesting and impressive.

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Space X doesn’t get a new Chairman of the Board every 4-8 years with changing priorities and a new board deciding funding every 2-4.

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I have an original Speedmaster with an orange sweep hand. It stills runs perfectly to this day. They don’t make them like they used to.
Go Coogs !

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They still do, just much more expensive now. But to your point, they are timeless.

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Love it. Has it been a watch design more copied?
I got mine a bit more than 20 years ago. I paid about $3,400 then. Today they are about $8.5/$9k.
I do not know the reason why the back shows the mechanism now. The emblematic back is a must for me.

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The conflict of interests for Musk are hard to ignore, unless like some on here that worship at the alter of Musk they just look the other way.

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“Rockets are expensive”

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Amazing job by Elon and team for saving our astronauts and and the aerospace breakthrough.

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NASA helped. They were probably a lot more hands on to the mission than Musk was.

All in all, it was a success which I applaud regardless of who did what. :clap:t2:

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Yea NASA helped. They let SpaceX launch and then clapped their hands when the capsule landed.

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That was a different NASA. This NASA is a mess.

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Artemis 95 billion. Starship so far 5 billion, projected total development cost of 10 billion. NASA should no longer be developing launch systems it’s just a glorified jobs program now. I’m a NASA brat my dad worked on Apollo, shuttle and Orion. I worked on station.

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NASA does a good job of pure science probes. Not very effective at building launch vehicles.

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Oops ! SpaceX does it again and goes 0 for 3 in Starship
launches in 2025.

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Mars, here we come